Receiving pathology results is a big part of the everyday workflow for almost every practice. Ideally all these results would come through without any issues. However, you may have experienced the occasional result come through as an ‘invalid result’, which doesn’t import into your database correctly.
The purpose of this article is to show you the process of dealing with these results, so you can import these results into your database in the most efficient way possible, and limit the amount of time you need to spend investigating these results.
Before you begin
It’s a good idea to understand how your pathology software is configured on your network, and familiarise yourself with its setup. This will include which import software you use to import your pathology, and which machine this software is installed on at your practice. By default, the invalid results are set up to be placed in the Invalid Results folder which is usually located in the following locations:
On a Windows machine:
C:\Genie\LabRslts\Invalid Results\
On a Mac machine:
Macintosh HD:Applications:Genie:LabRslts:Invalid Results:
If you are able to find this location before you start, you will be able to locate the invalid results much quicker, and will save time searching for this folder in the future.
Dealing with the invalid result
- When Genie attempts to import an invalid result file, you will receive an error message if you have tried to import the result manually through Open > Pathology and Radiology, or if this result was imported automatically:
- Genie will also generate a task and send this to the Administrator account in Genie, letting that user know there has been a failure importing a result
- The result file is then moved into the Invalid Results folder, located in the Genie\LabRslts folder on the same machine your pathology software is installed on
- The next step is to identify the format of the result file in question, to determine if the result is in a format that Genie is not able to import. You can do this by checking the file name specified in the error message within Genie, in the task that is received by the Administrator, or you can click the
button to see where the result is currently sitting (in the Invalid Results folder):
- It’s important to note Genie can only import result files in ORU, PIT, and HL7 format
- As you can see in the screenshot above, the result is in PDF format. If you notice the format of the invalid result is not Genie supported, you will need to contact the pathology lab who sent the result, and ask them to resend the result in one of the compatible formats listed above
- If you are unsure about who the pathology lab is, you can check this by opening the result in question using TextEdit or Notepad on your computer. This can be done by right clicking on the result file and selecting Open With, then choosing TextEdit/Notepad from the list. You may have to search your computer for one of these options if they are not listed, by selecting Other on a Mac, or Choose another App on a Windows. Once you have opened the result in text format, you will be able to see the pathology lab listed at the top of the text document, along with the third-party carrier
- If you have confirmed with the pathology lab that the problem result file is in a supported format, but it has still given you an error message when importing, you can send the result file through to Genie Support so we can test importing this into our testing environment, to see if we experience the same issue with the result.
- If you are unsure about the exact name of the result file, the task that was generated at the time of importing contains the name of the invalid result
- Once you have made a note of the name of the result, you will need to access the machine your pathology software is installed on, and obtain the result file from Genie\LabRslts\Invalid Results\
- Once you have the result file, you will need to attach this to an email and send it through to support@geniesolutions.com.au for further testing